


Seniority of Mind

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Love, Last Love, Oxford, Romance, Waltzing, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 06:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17038673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: Anne and Frederick meet again at Oxford. It's not awkward at all.





	Seniority of Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [surreptitiously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/surreptitiously/gifts).



> I was THIS CLOSE to writing a Hogwarts AU. WINK WINK
> 
> Title lifted from canon.

"Didn't you two used to date?"

Elizabeth had the indefatigable talent, an innately honed set of weapons almost, to cut to the very quick without either tact or caution, mostly due to the fact that she had no clue as to the true endgame of it. Hurting Anne came naturally, Anne suspected. She could hardly resent her sister when it seemed as if she truly had no clue as to the hurt being inflicted. Oh, she did perceive hurt had occurred, but ostensibly could not pinpoint the exact source. This has never sat well with Anne, but she'd grown used to it.

Anne mumbled a, "Yes, back in Sixth Form," and Elizabeth let it be, moving on to Father's newest conceit.

One grew used to this sort of life.

*

Back in Sixth Form, she and Frederick (never Fred or Freddie to her) had had A Thing.

Never shy about using words and avoiding pointless euphemisms, Anne found this time around to be without the necessary descriptor for a relationship which had lasted the rest of Sixth Form, all of Seventh, and had them swiftly and unquestionably detonated like a badly-made bomb right under their noses. It was A Thing. She doubted Frederick called it anything better.

*

To be perfectly honest, she should have suspected a ploy in some form or other when Elizabeth brought it up. She never came down to Oxford to see Anne if she could avoid it (and avoided she did, frequently and emphatically).

*

It was when Mary brought it up that Anne knew it was unavoidable at this point. She yet had to have a solid understanding of what was coming, but she knew the winds were blowing in some sort of direction. Mary and Elizabeth were different sides of a coin in motion.

"You and Frederick Wentworth... Huh." Mary stopped, with no discernible notion of where the sentence was going, as was her habit when she had too much understanding of a subject and was, thus, confused as to which information to subscribe to. "Coming down to Magdalen, isn't he?" Then the crunch of a biscuit and the slurp of weak tea.

"Is he?" Anne replied. Mary treated it as a non-question. Also typical. Anne's ghostly tones went unnoticed, also typical.

"You two used to date or something back at school. Funny that." Crunch, crunch. Slurp, slurp. "And his coming here. I wouldn't have thought this would be his sort of place at all." Frown. Slurp. Cough.

Anne wanted to ask too many questions to even articulate without losing breath, but settled on, "When will he be coming?" Her own cup of tea lay discarded in her lap. She felt her stomach give a lurch just glancing at the plate of sugared biscuits.

"Next week, I expect." Mary downed the rest of her tea.

Start of term, then.

Anne changed the subject with the ease and comfort of one who had know Mary most of her life.

*

Frederick Wentworth was coming to Madgalen College to read History. Which was what Anne had been doing for the past two years. In a sense, it had rhyme and reason if one knew Frederick as she knew him (had known him, just a few years back), and the coincidence of her presence there only served to baffle her. Surely in everyone's eyes, especially his, it was a bizarre set of circumstances which affected no one.

*

The bizarre part came later in the form of Frederick being brother to Sophy, a lovely older girl reading Law in the same year as Anne. Sophy was painfully nice, diligent and a great study partner. Anne liked her immensely and was only saddened that they had moved past a passing acquaintanceship only in the last few months. Sophy was also happily married, hence her surname and the silly confusion Anne had gone through upon finding out the circumstances of Sophy's family. Anne didn't suspect any intentional treachery, but the coincidence was poignant, and not lost on her.Oh, there was hardly any meaning behind it, she was sure, only that she should have had this information back in school. Showed how much she'd known Frederick to begin with.

*

Anne made it a habit of not listening to advice expounded by her sisters if she could help it. Decades of poor life choices on their parts had made it clear they had no knowledge they could impart that Anne couldn't acquire off the back of a cereal box in a pitch-dark room during a thunderstorm. It was especially true when it came to Frederick.

Luckily, they had too little understanding of the situation and too little information about the circumstances to offer any advice this time around, though Anne thought it best to hide as much regarding this reestablished acquaintanceship as possible. They would endeavour to become involved out of misplaced pride and pure stubbornness, and Anne would never hear the end of it. She liked her quiet life at Oxford, thank you very much.

First and foremost on the list of things Mary and Elizabeth should never hear about was the first meeting between Anne and Frederick.

"How do you do?" Not his best line, but Anne's right-hand pinkie twitched and she felt a blush coming.

"Quite." Definitely her worst reply. "I mean, quite well. Yes. How do... you... do?" Too reticent, but he well knew she was bad at hiding her emotions. The last couple of years had diminished the clumsiness, but only to a certain extent. In lieu of speaking words to highlight her emotions her mind had taken to showing them through a lack of proper English. Grand all around. She felt the blush spreading.

"Quite well." A reply both worthy of the old Frederick and an utter disappointment to the current Anne.

Magdalen College wasn't big enough by half.

*

Funnily enough, over the following weeks, they managed to see nothing of each other. It only left Anne to assume it was a concerted effort on Frederick's part and not the doing of the universe, unless the universe was playing an odd game indeed.

It carried on well into October, and finally ended on Halloween, at a gathering in someone's rooms, where the both of them had managed to arrive at about the same time to make it both completely fortuitous and utterly awkward.

Anne had just decided that the words "How do you do?" would be completely ignored by her regardless of the level of rudeness when Sophy came over, in high spirits and offering spirits. "Lovely, isn't it?" and Anne assumed she meant the party.

"Just got here, but old Joan always makes it fun." Their host was nowhere to be seen, but Frederick certainly was, glass of white wine clutched in a nonchalant hand. And also coming Anne's way.

"Quite a lot of people here tonight," he commented vaguely. Then kissed his sister on both cheeks. Anne got a stare ending in a polite nod. It was probably as much as she deserved.

She expected that to be the end of it, and was quite content to move on with most of her dignity intact, when the music changed from a background electronic bass to a foreground chamber waltz of sorts. Oxford was that sort of place.

Frederick's entire demeanour changed. He stared more directly and definitely more intently, and Anne felt it would have made her explicitly impolite (far from her intended behaviour) to leave just then, especially when Sophy was backing away infinitesimally, taking the spirits intended for Anne with her and melting into the crowd to speak to some known faces.

Frederick downed the dregs of his wine swiftly and placed his empty glass on a nearby table. People on the other side of the room were waltzing, and he proffered a hand to Anne. His expression mutated from intense in a disconcerting sort of way to pleading in a confusing way. It was the worst because Anne couldn't muster up the will of saying no, or at least of ignoring him altogether.

They waltzed as they used to to Marianne Faithfull records playing on Frederick's send-hand gramophone.

"When I ask how you're doing, I'm trying to figure out how much you still hate me," he said half-way through their waltz. Anne's left ear twitched and got uncomfortably warm in two beats' time.

"I don't--! I. Don't. Why would I?" she said to his left clavicle. "It was I who... I mean. You know how..."

"I know."

Two more spins around the room.

"And I'm the one who's asking now if you do. Hate me. At all. Because I don't you, and I rather like the dancing enough to want to do it again."

Anne nodded vaguely at his right clavicle. They were a right nice pair of... clavicles.

In too sort a time the waltz was over and they separated. He went in search of more white wine, presumably, and Anne went looking for Sophy, then their host, then took part in a conversation on Regency mores. By the time people started leaving, Anne had stopped denying to herself she was scanning the crowd for Frederick.

He didn't so much as offer to walk her to her rooms as Sophy pushing her in his general direction as they were both putting her jackets on. The offer was implied, Anne assumed. It would have become even more awkward to start a conversation about it.

"Yes," she said as they were descending the stairs out into the streets. It was clearly spoken and lacking in any misunderstandings, she personally thought. And then she found herself quite alone in the streets.

When she turned around, she found Frederick, still and unblinking, under a streetlight. Whether he was shocked or pleased or whatever, Anne wasn't quite certain. A few years ago she would have known for sure. But something approaching a smile gave her the impression it was a welcomes response. And then he joined her and they walked on.

Anne couldn't be sure, but she thought his right hand might be brushing her left as they made their way to her rooms. She decided she would ask about it once they were inside.


End file.
